The Kung Fu Panda movie series makes a comeback this year. Released on March 8, 2024, the movie is already at 71% rotten tomatoes.
With the third movie being in 2016, eight years later Dreamworks gave us another look at Po’s fun loving character in Kung Fu Panda 4.
Having seen the previous movies, I had the inkling that this new movie would follow in the same fashion as the others. Certain characters fit the cliché stereotype of going from bad to good. At ties, it can be repetitive to milk that constant character theme.
Some of the characters carried over from the first few movies, ultimately ending up in some plot holes if you haven’t watched the first three movies. You can tend to feel a little lost when characters are reintroduced or mentioned.
Keeping in mind that this is a children’s movie, the jokes can still lack humor. At times there have been jokes that were made, and even in a theater filled with families of children, I didn’t hear a single laugh. The humor felt thrown in like an afterthought, and it seemed to be put there to fill in some time.
Although it was a tad confusing with the characters that were carried over, I did enjoy the fun moments and references from the previous movies. They kept some fan favorites, but still went along with the plot of the movie. Even some of the older characters had their own developments, which was refreshing to see.
The creativity of the villain was something I appreciated. It was refreshing to see some new plot and a new motive for a villain besides “world domination.”
Overall, I have no strong opinions on whether I like or dislike this movie. The main determining factor to see if someone would like it, is if someone would like it, is if they watched the first three or not. If you were a fan of the previous movies, I recommend you go into the theater to watch this most recent one.
